White Hills have a new album called So You Are… So You’ll Be coming out on Thrill Jockey, August 20th. That’s pretty good news if you’re a fan of angryman space rock. Please have a listen to the first preview of the album ‘In Your Room’ down below. You can grip it from the label right here.

Safety conscious man makes fruit salad. W-H-I-T-E (Cory Hanson)’s new video, by Jesse Hlebo and Andrew Hutton. You can also check out an older video here. W-H-I-T-E’s new record “III” is out on Aagoo on May 28th. You can also grab it on Bandcamp.

FUCK yeah man! When I ganked Tjutjuna’s debut from a list that Kenny Bloggins at The Decibel Tolls put up a few years ago, I couldn’t put it down. Dense layers of keys, drums and whatever else they chuck in will envelop your ears and fill your brain up with custard. Their songs have a tendency to hang around in a vocal-less zone, more frequently inhabited by squalls, crashes and wails over a fairly chunky motorik. Prepare for a thick trace paste to be smeared upon you.

The 7-track record is streaming at Fire Talk’s Bandcamp, which is nice of them. You can grip a physical copy for $15USD + some shipping, or simply go digital and stare at the album cover on your phone. Have a listen below, I reckon.

Immixture is a reworking of Auckland based Mean Girls’ self-titled EP which cropped up on Bandcamp last last year. I had an infatuation with the EP when it released but due to being a big dork I didn’t cover it on this website (here’s a hint: it’s real mean). When I saw Mean Girls play at Chronophonium I felt a wee bit of genuine terror seeing singer/bassist Zac Arnold transform from a mild-mannered young man into a glistening, snarling She-Hulk in front of me. Drumsman Martin Selma holds down a surgically sharp beat with enough force to keep trim the fat off the noise and keep things breathing. If you get a chance to check them out live, do try it. It’s a bit like Butthole Surfers by way of Clockcleaner and that’s okay with me.

Immixture hands the guts of Mean Girls over to 5 remix artists to (in the bands own words): take the basic song elements into directions that Mean Girls would not be able to make themselves, expanding the short aggresive tunes into expansive, oddball soundscapes. Okay, the 2nd half is 8bit reworking, something that should never be tolerated, but I’m stoked on this enough to ignore it (or put it on when playing Hotline Miami).

Fresh from playing on Jimmy Fallon and confusing the shit out of America, their new single is dropped upon us via YouTube (vid by Robert Semmer). It’s got that familiar Deerhunter bass boogie behind it with a decent layering of feedback, crackle and noise.

Can’t wait for that record to plop out as a leak – but you can pre-order on iTunes right here.

When you chuck Stephen O’Malley from SunnO))) and Atsuo from Boris into a sonic blender with Michio Kurihara and Bill Herzog you get this thickshake of a supergroup. Although it’s made up of some of the more thrashin’, heavy-duty drone-wizards on the globe today, the sound is more subdued than you might assume. Having Atsuo up in the mix helps keep O’Malley’s drones churning, probably making this as accessible an album as the pair are likely to produce – it’s almost light and fluffy at times with that air of foreboding you get with Sunn always seeming far off. Their self-titled dropped on Drag City just recently, and you can grip it digitally for $9.99 US over there (or for 2 bucks extra if you want flac, you dweeb). It’s also on vinyl, cd etc etc.

Co.fee is a hip-hop dude with a deep interest in film soundtracks. This really helped him project Bermuda outside of the scores of wave-based beat musicians out there on the net, with its orchestral stabs and vibraphone waverings. The EP feels as though it spawned forth from the heady heights of the exotica era – where the tropics were dipped in mystery and intrigue. Personally, I can think of nothing better than sashaying about a beach with this playing from what may be cyborg speaker-palm trees.

I was thoroughly excited to find the EP before this – Easy Listening – is still get-able on tasty wax. Super highly recommended also.

Whoa, way hey! I was om the fence about going to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse late nek week. Seeing him at the Big Day Out was a pretty big deal a few years ago, I figured that was my peak in both interest in Shakey and likelihood of seeing him perform any better… I couldn’t throw a large chunk of change down just to oogle Old Black one more time – even if recent reports of Crazy Horse shows are of jam circles, backs turned to the crowd Grandpas generating 12 longgg songs in 2 and a half hours…

Tipping point came with the announcement of Melbourne band The Drones as support. They’ve not come across the ditch before for myriad baffling reasons too inane and cloaked in my laziness to go into (newsflash: probably money?).. But here we are. Fully stoked.

For the uninitiated: The Audio Foundation (based in the old Parisian Tie Factory down behind K Road) put on shows and enable musicians from left-field to get their freak on in front of an audience in Auckland. They’ve had acts like Somme, Mark McGuire and Nigel Wright playing in that humid little space – it’s a gem. They’ve launched a low-power FM radiostation that’s streaming online. From their own guff:

AFM features fortnightly specialist shows presented by local DJs every Sunday and Monday evenings (NZ time) and broadcasts the amazing Audio Foundation MP3 library of NZ independent & adventurous music and sound between those periods. AFM endeavours to promote and explore high quality, distinctive visions in sound from both New Zealand and beyond – please feel free to join us!

You can listen to it here and read more here. It’s a low-power FM station, so you can tune in with a radio 88.3 if you’re in a 50m radius of Poynton Terrace. Like Fleet FM, but with less psychobilin drooled onto the microphone (at least so far?)

(I admit, I saw this news on the front page of the Harbour News, a goddamn old fashioned newspaper. It had a cute little description of noise music as well as a great picture of Chris Cudby in studio).

The last time Wooden Shjips came to Auckland, I was away. In fact, my shitty memory is having a hard time with this, but I’m pretty sure they’ve been twice. Anyway, I’m very mad about this. Last night went someways to restoring justice to the world, as Moon Duo played a ripper of a set at the Kings Arms. I spent the whole show sandwiched up against Ripley’s foldback, making gumby facials alternating between his guitar playing and Sanae Yamada’s synth fiddling. The crowd was mellow and plentiful, a pretty good buzz all around. This post isn’t here to tell you anything new, but when I look back in a few years at least I’ll be able to remember this show.

Being a big fan of Psychic Ills, I jumped on this new record as soon as humanly possible (which, to be fair, was basically instant thanks to our friend John Internet). I’m a t-shirt wearing multi-format owning Psychic Ills devotee, which is pretty out of the ordinary for a band I knew so little about. Most of the attraction came from the song Mind Daze, off their debut on Sacred Bones Records – 2011’s Hazed Dream.

One Track Mind differs from its predecessor by diverging ever-further from the bands noisy beginnings, landing at times in country-jamband territory. Tracks like the attached I get by hark back to earlier efforts, while the top order seem pretty content to keep things a little more subdued and low key. Either way, One Track Mind is a solid record and worth having a go on. You can grip it direct from the label here, and it’s on all the big names (including Spotify).

Having missed several boats over the last few months (it’s been so long since I posted I couldn’t remember by password), I’m forcing out some updates, get the blood flowing again.

Scott & Charlene’s Wedding are from Brisbane. I know nothing about Brisbane, other than it’s sunnier than Melbourne and less full of total pricks than Sydney, based on a quick poll I conducted around the office. There’s a sense of humour to their lyrics which sits in-between the two options ‘funny’ music can take – full on Weird Al or a Rhys Darby routine. Actually, those both sound like the bad end of a the spectrum, so eh… What I’m saying here is this is enjoyable, crunchy Australian accents or not.

These Swedes are getting a fair bit of attention of late. Possibly largely due to their spuriousclaim to have existed for generations in little known, Voodoo curse haunted, backwaters village Korpolombolo.

Put that press release carry-on aside and this could still be one of the best new records you’ll hear this year. Imagine space rock in the vein of some scorching White Hills, filtered through Fela Kuti, filtered through mystic Swedish hipsters. Also imagine an obligatory Can influence. If that’s not working, put your imagination aside also and have a listen:

World Music is out on Rocket Recordings (home of Gnod and UFOmammut). I have no idea if it’s possible to purchase directly from them (maybe I suck at the Internet). Why not try the good English chaps at Norman Records.

Something might have clued you in already, based on the majority of the posts I’ve made to date.. But the words ‘solo’ ‘psych’ and ‘project’ are the main pointers I use to find new music. It’s working out okay for me in this post-2010 blogwave-chill-alt-idm-swaggerverse. I don’t know, mates, I just like a bit of wangling on guitars. Comets on Fire honcho Ben Chasny provides the healing tones I need, here with his Six Organs of Admittance. The new record Ascent is out on Drag City.